TV’s ‘Big Bang Theory’ lands Hawking for cameo

The CBS science-nerd comedy The Big Bang Theory has a thing for real-scientist cameos. They’ve had astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and shuttle astronaut Mike Massimino on the show. But step aside boys, make way for one of the heaviest names ever in science.

The sitcom — starring Jim Parsons as Dr. Sheldon Cooper, a brilliant but socially deluded theoretical physicist — has been trying to get Hawking, perhaps the world’s best-known living scientist, on the show for several years, TV Guide says.

But Hawking, who has ALS (better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease), was never able to appear until now because of his health.